Scott Peters, creator of the lovably bizarre mutant saga 4400, has just announced the show will be canceled after 4 seasons and a trippy cliffhanger. In this clip, you see the show at its best, making fun of its own gooftastic premise, which is that there are 4400 people in the world who time-traveled to the future, got mutant powers, and came back to save the planet.

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The 4400's crack team of mutant-wranglers are watching a movie made by a 4400 named Curtis with the best mutant power ever: he uncovers conspiracies by writing B-movies. Here he pitches his latest, The Marked, which tells the (true) tale of how future dudes who don't like the 4400 have also traveled back in time to stop the 4400 from saving the world. Yes, everything had gotten really complicated and byzantine by the fourth season, but it had also gotten psychotically rad.

Jeffrey Combs, star of Re-Animator and TV ham extraordinaire, played a mad scientist who invented promicin, a glowing green drug that could make anybody into a superpowered 4400 mutant. (His mind-controlling girlfriend was played by Summer Glau, from Firefly and soon to be in the Sarah Connor Chronicles). Meanwhile, a very Scientology-esque religious leader from the 4400 had taken over Seattle and was making everyone take promicin to bring on the mutantastic future. Plus, there was a lot of weird mutant sex and angsting.

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I've always guiltily enjoyed 4400, in part because it cheerfully stole from everything: X-Files, X-Men, TimeTrax, Heroes, and even Scientology. It was always fun and melodramatic, full of culty mutant enclaves, secretive pseudo-government agencies, mad scientists, superpowered babies who grow to adulthood overnight, and a lot of unnecessary hair gel. Plus, the fourth season cliffhanger — now the show's finale — was utterly insane. Everybody in the world was about to get their hands on promicin and go mutant. 4400, you were never afraid to go over the top. I'll miss you.